As Women Find New Roles, Men Gain Freedom, Too

As Women Redefine Themselves, Men Gain Freedom, Too

October 13, 1992|By JEFF RIVERS; Courant Associate Editor

During the past several weeks, women have leaped ahead in the polls for U.S. Senate seats. A woman has played goalie in an NHL exhibition hockey game. Another woman has been added to the formerly all-male Harlem Magicians basketball team.

I'd like to talk about what I think that means. But before I do, I have to make a confession. This confession is not the worst thing I've done, said or thought regarding women. Those confessions will come later, when I know you better.

Here's today's confession:

When I was in the third and fourth grades, my friend Lehman and I spent our morning walks to school discussing the important questions of the day. Was Coke better than Pepsi? Were Fords better than Chevies? Would the Dodgers beat the Yankees in the World Series? Did Cassius Clay (who would transcend his sport as Muhammad Ali) have any chance of beating Sonny Liston for the heavyweight championship?

As I remember, our answers were swift, sure and wrong.

"Liston'll kill 'im."

But there was one question -- though not as important as the others -- that we couldn't answer so quickly. We wrestled with it for much of 1963 and 1964. It wrinkled our brows and challenged our ability to reason: Were we going to allow our wives to work? The way we saw it, the question came down to money, control and convenience.

Would the additional money our wives brought in be worth the risk that they might believe we couldn't tell them what to do? After all, they'd be wage earners, too.

Would the extra money our wives brought in be worth the inconvenience of their not having our favorite meals ready when we came home from work? Now this might have seemed to be a strange question for the two of us to ponder. The women in our neighborhood worked. And they weren't bringing in extra cash. The money they made bought Wonder Bread and Campbell's Soup, not trips to Disneyland.

Additionally, the question might have seemed strange because we didn't even have girlfriends let alone wives.

The girls thought we were "nice." But as any guy can tell you, nice boys don't have girlfriends. If you wanted girlfriends, you had to be "cool" or "crazy."

So, nice as we were, we knew that if there were going to be any women in our lives (other than our mothers), we'd have to marry them, just like the squares on TV.

And if we were going to live TV lives, we'd have to respond to TV problems. And since we weren't going to marry witches who would turn us into stuff (like the dumb guy on "Bewitched"), deciding whether our wives could work would probably be the kind of thing we'd have to figure out when we weren't drinking martinis, whatever they were.

OK, that was the confession.

I wanted you to know that when I was 9 years old -- a pre-man, if you will -- I looked to a time when it would be my province to decide whether another adult, my wife, could work. Because I'd be a man and she'd be a woman. And ... well ... that was the way it was supposed to be.

That boyhood arrogance is a part of my relationships with women even now. I just have to struggle to make it an ever smaller part. (Much as I suspect other adults have to deal with the arrogance of their youthful musings about whether they'd let them live in their neighborhoods.)

Part of my struggle and that of other men is the recognition that women can do anything -- not anything men want them to do but anything they want to do.

Like other traditionally oppressed people (folks I call TOPs), women are winning the struggle to define themselves. As single women. As wives and mothers. As wives or mothers. As lovers of men. As lovers of women. As workers inside and outside the home. As salespeople and not salesgirls. As military pilots. As truck drivers. As NHL goalies.

Not only is there a new definition, a new attitude, but there is a new conversation as well.

For example, when I had an unsatisfying job with a big corporation, my wife told me I could quit and start free-lance writing. I didn't need to take care of her. She could take care of us. She'd decided.

The 9-year-old in me didn't let me take her up on her offer.

But I learned from it. As women like my wife redefine themselves, at home and in the workplace, men will be freed to explore new roles.

I've come a long way, baby.

And if my wife ever makes that stay-home-and-write offer again, I'll be ready